Think of the many ways in which the term language is used: computer language, spoken and written (verbal) language, body language, and music – so often referred to as the universal language. There are, of course, others we could list, but these four will serve the purpose of this essay. Linguists would not classify all of these as languages, technically speaking, so for our discussion, we’ll refer to them as language-types. Of course, these four language-types serve varied purposes, but one way to compare them is to note the breadth and depth to which they can communicate. What I mean by breadth and depth of communication is better explained by examining these language-types in more detail.
Computer languages interface between computers and their users or other computers; they provide instructions that tell the computer how to respond to user input or communication from other computers. Computer languages are very specific, instructing devices exactly how to respond to circumstances they’re likely to encounter – if this, then do this, else do this – kinds of instructions. They can instruct devices to respond in any number of ways; display text on the monitor, open the CD drive, navigate to a website, etc., but instructions must be anticipated and written for every condition they are likely to encounter. Most importantly, in order for computers to communicate directly with human beings, they rely on pictorial, written or spoken language, not computer language, and they cannot natively represent human emotion. They are limited, then, both in their breadth and depth of communication – limited in breadth as they can only provide a device the ability to react to situations that have been anticipated by the programmer and then only by the use of a surrogate language, and limited in depth that they possess no potential for carrying on true conversations with users or for communicating with any true sense of feeling or emotion.
Body language also has a limited range of communication. The types of communication body language is capable of are restricted to things like feelings, emotions and physical conditions. It can’t be used to communicate what your birthday is, your favorite color or how many children you have (pantomime is not body language.) It can’t tell someone to buy bread and milk at the grocery, or that there’s a tornado warning in effect. But without speaking, body language can communicate tiredness, cold, embarrassment, sadness, anger, etc., as well as the depth of emotion – rage, hopelessness, devastation, joy. So while body language has limited breadth of communication, in those areas where it does communicate, it excels and possesses the ability to communicate with great depth.
In this exercise, verbal language can be thought of as a reciprocal of body language; where body language’s strength is in depth of communication and weakness is breadth, a verbal language’s strength in is its breadth of communication while its weakness is its depth. Using verbal language, we can instruct someone to perform an action – any action – now or in the future. We can describe people, places, things; we can note how we are feeling and the cause of those feelings – its range or breadth of communication is enormous.
But it’s in the area of feelings and emotions where verbal language lacks depth and can be vague. If we say we are sad, does the word sad really represent the specific feeling that we have? Isn’t the word sad a bit vague, used to represent various feelings? We can be sad that we lost significant money in the stock market, sad that our favorite sports team lost their last game, sad that a parent has passed away – aren’t those really different feelings? Why is it that sometimes we struggle to name the feelings we have – sad, depressed, morose, glum, melancholy, despondent, blue, dispirited, sorrowful, dismal, doleful, downcast. What if none of those words really describe what we are feeling – because the words aren’t the feelings? Aren’t there, in fact, feelings we have that we can’t name? If we watch a person describe their feelings when they’ve lost a loved one, don’t we really get more information from their body language than we do from the words they speak?
Music is more similar to body language than to verbal language. Music is certainly limited it the range or breadth of things it can communicate. But it’s undeniable that the emotions generated by Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem, his Symphony No. 3 or Piano Concerto No. 2 are genuine and deep. It’s certainly probable that feelings or emotions generated by music differ listener to listener, but isn’t that attributable more to the listener, rather than to some deficiency in music’s ability to communicate? Speaking as a composer, I can say that music allows me to create something that communicates my feelings about a person, situation, idea or ideal that I would otherwise struggle to accurately represent in words. Creating a piece of music allows me to transfer my feelings into a vehicle that can more accurately convey those feelings to the listener.
Comparing computer language, body language, verbal language and music by the breadth and depth of their ability to communicate, it’s apparent that no one of these language-types excel at both. To deny that music is a true language because of its deficiencies in breadth of communication, is to severely and unnecessarily restrict one’s definition of language and to minimize music’s innate ability to communicate depth of emotion.